The 2014 report by FIFA ethics chief investigator Michael Garcia, which was leaked overnight to a German newspaper, details strong evidence that David Cameron and Prince William played a leading role in potential corrupt practices to secure the World Cup for the UK. The report also details improper payments from the Australia FFA led by Westfield owner and former Ukraine based oligarch Frank Lowy.

The former prime minister and Prince William were at a meeting during which a vote-swapping deal between England and South Korea was discussed, according to an official report released Tuesday night.

The long-awaited Fifa report has disclosed the lengths to which England’s football bosses went to court Fifa executives, many of them now discredited, as they sought to secure votes for England’s 2018 bid.

At one point officials discussed the possibility of arranging a meeting with the Queen for one Fifa representative whose vote could have helped England.

The Fifa report reveals how Mr Cameron asked the South Korean delegation to back England’s bid, only to be told that England would have to agree to reciprocate by pledging support for South Korea’s bid to host the 2022 tournament.

Such a vote-swapping deal, the report concluded, would have been in “violation of the anti-collusion rules”.

The report, written in 2014 by Fifa’s then chief ethics investigator Michael Garcia, details how England bid officials interacted with Fifa officials in the run up to the vote.

It discloses how they were asked to bestow an honorary knighthood and arrange an audience with the Queen for one South American official.

England 2018 officials arranged work at Aston Villa and Tottenham Hotspur football clubs for the “adopted son” of one official.

They even considered a request by the same official, the Trinidad and Tobago Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, to have his hometown twinned with an “English village” according to the report. The FA offered Burton upon Trent, in Staffordshire, as a potential twin town.

The report discloses how Mr Cameron met Fifa vice president Mong-Joon Chung of South Korea in Prince William’s suite at the Baur au lac Hotel in Zurich on the eve of the vote in December 2010.

South Korea was bidding to stage the 2022 World Cup which was also being decided at the same time.

“The Prime Minister asked Mr Chung to vote for England’s bid, and Mr Chung responded that he would if Mr [Geoff] Thompson [chairman of England’s bid] voted for Korea,” states the report based on evidence provided by the English delegation.

The Queen is also named in the report after it emerged that FA chiefs met with a senior Fifa official in 2009 who asked for an audience with the monarch.

In the meeting with Lord Triesman, the then FA chairman, it is alleged that Dr Leoz said, “that he believed that a knighthood from the United Kingdom would be appropriate”.

Andy Anson, chief executive of England 2018, the company behind the English FA bid, told investigators he recalled officials “said to me that it would be nice if at some point Dr Leoz would get to meet the Queen.”

England 2018 officials, recognising the difficulty of arranging an honorary knighthood, instead discussed “creating a FA Disability Cup” that “could be named after him”. Subsequently officials questioned whether naming a trophy in his honour was “big enough” inducement to gain Dr Leoz’s support.

His interior minister job went to another young prince, Abdulaziz bin Saud, whose father is the governor of Saudi Arabia’s vast Eastern province, which is home to most of the nation’s Shi’ites [and much of the oil] and borders Qatar.

Yesterday’s royal decree stated that “a majority” of senior royal members — 31 of 34 — on the shadowy Allegiance Council supported the recasting of the line of succession.

Mr bin Salman has also supported floating part of state oil firm Aramco on the international stock markets to allow foreign part-ownership and investment.

In remarks aired on Saudi TV in May, he framed the tensions with Iran in sectarian terms, saying Tehran’s goal was “to control the Islamic world” and to spread its Shi’ite doctrine. He also vowed to take “the battle” to Iran.

In Thailand, a man has been sentenced to 35 years for insulting the royal house. A 34-year-old businessman according to a military court wrote unacceptable things on Facebook. It is the highest punishment ever for someone who is guilty of lese majeste.

Actually, the man would get 70 years in prison, but because he confessed, his punishment will be halved. Lese majeste in Thailand is punished with imprisonment from 3 to 15 years, but the man had committed the same crime several times.

King Bhumibol died in October 2016 and was seen as a strict enforcer of Article 112, the article that makes lese majeste a crime. Even after his death, there seems to be no less harsh punishment in Thailand for insulting the Royal House.

The military government of the country says that Article 112 is necessary for maintaining the monarchy and national security. Human rights organizations say that the law is in violation of international human rights agreements, because criticism is oppressed.

My last trip from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain through The King Fahd Causeway. This project cost a total of US$800 million (SAR3 billion). One of the major contractors of the project was Ballast Nedam, based in the Netherlands. The four-lane road is 25 km (16 mi) long and approximately 23 m (75 ft) wide, and was built using 350,000 m2 (3,800,000 sq ft) of concrete along with 47,000 metric tonnes of reinforced steel.

This is clear from the documentary “Concerning Saudi Arabia,” which HUMAN broadcasters will be transmitting tonight on NPO 2 21.00. It was already known that Ballast Nedam settled this kickbacks case in 2012, for 17.5 million euros. But from documents which documentary maker Jacco Versluis saw numerous new details emerge.

Bassie and Adriaan

The kings Fahd and Abdullah, both now deceased, had aliases at Ballast Nedam: Bassie & Adriaan.

The names of two Dutch TV clowns.

According to the FIOD the two brothers received bribes, or they were about to get them. In total Ballast Nedam is said to have paid at least half a billion dollars in bribes to members of the Saudi royal family and other senior Saudis.

“Advisory work”

A large part of the bribe, 467 million dollars, is said to have ended up with Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal (pseudonym: Tiger). Al-Waleed is with assets of $ 17.3 billion at number 41 on the list of richest people on earth. In 2003 he received the Dutch medal of Officer in the Order of Oranje Nassau for his role in the Dutch-Saudi economic relations.

On paper Ballast Nedam paid him that money for consulting work. In reality, according to the FIOD, these were kickbacks, such as getting a contract for the renovation of two airports.

For those airports the Saudi Air Force paid $ 580 million to Ballast Nedam. The FIOD suspects that contract was actually worth only 249 million and Ballast previously paid kickbacks, 331 million added up the bill. That means that the Saudi treasury had to foot the bill for the bribe. In other words, the Saudi prince enriched himself with Saudi public money, through Ballast Nedam.

Assistance request to Saudi Arabia

After the settlement with the prosecution the case did not come before the court. But several former executives at Ballast Nedam will still be prosecuted individually. They are suspected of having taken parts of the bribe for themselves.

One of the suspects wants to hear a witness for his defense in Saudi Arabia. The Ministry of Security and Justice says that would require a request from the Saudi government. But the Foreign Ministry advises not to submit a request for assistance to Saudi Arabia.

Royal family

“The negative recommendation is particularly given since being asked to question a witness about the involvement of a member of the royal family in Saudi Arabia,” writes a department head at the Ministry of Security and Justice. “This is not considered desirable for the bilateral relations.”

The prosecution agrees with this decision and points in a letter to the court also to the risks to the witness. “It seems somehow not wise to Saudi nationals, with the current regime, inside or outside their country, to make them subject to interrogation concerning bribery of Saudi government officials. This is because of the kind of reprisals taken by the Saudi authorities against unwelcome manifestations.”

Ballast Nedam declined to comment on the new findings.

The West’s “humanitarian interventionists” howl over bloody conflicts when an adversary can be blamed but go silent when an ally is doing the killing, such as Saudi Arabia in Yemen, reports Jonathan Marshall.

Among those who have been given the permits to hunt the migratory bird in Sindh and Balochistan are an uncle of the king, his defence adviser, a field marshal and armed forces chief, and other members of the Bahraini royal family, according to the sources.

The sources said that not only was Pakistan a signatory to various international nature conservation conventions that restricted the bird’s hunting but the country’s wildlife protection laws also prohibited its killing. The Pakistanis were, therefore, not allowed to hunt the protected species.

The hunting permits signed by the foreign ministry’s deputy chief of protocol, Naeem Iqbal Cheema, have been sent to the members of the Bahraini royal family through Bahrain’s embassy in the federal capital.

The letter Mr Cheema sent to the Gulf kingdom’s diplomatic mission in Islamabad says: “The ministry of foreign affairs of Pakistan presents its compliments to the Embassy of Kingdom of Bahrain in Islamabad and has the honour to state that the government of Pakistan has conveyed its recommendations to the authorities in the provinces concerned for allocation of following areas to the dignitaries of Kingdom of Bahrain for hunting of houbara bustard for the season 2016-17.”

Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the Bahrain Defence Forces Sheikh Khalifa bin Ahmed Al-Khalifa will hunt the bird in Toisar tehsil of Musakhel district in Balochistan. The king’s first cousin and interior minister, Lt Gen Sheikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al-Khalifa, will hunt the migratory bird in Jaffarabad district of Balochistan.